5 american’s, two Italians arrested and subsequently charged with fraud and a pretty significant drug trafficking conspiracy to distribute opioids in both Florida and Tennessee.

Four of the defendants were from Knoxville, one from Florida, and two were arrested by authorities in Rome, the US is seeking to extradite those two.

The indictments that were handed down allege that each of the defendants were involved in a scheme to operate pill mills in the United States.

The defendants in this particular case just so happened to run The Urgent Care & Surgery Center Enterprise.

The profit that these 7 turned from the distribution of oxycodone, oxymorphone and morphine stands at the very least around $21 million, the pill mill scheme also involved kickbacks and of course money laundering.

As for the $700 dead patients, all of the deaths were a result of overdosing on the narcotics that were prescribed by the center. I’d be willing to bet that the narcotics were also being over prescribed.

These lovely defendants hired medical providers with DEA registration numbers, allowing the defendants to actually prescribe the drugs and worse, the clinics did not accept insurance and ordered drug screenings in order to defraud Medicare.

Drug dealers would send “patients” in droves to the clinics just to get drugs prescribed to the mules for resale purposes on the streets while the pretend patients would receive some of the narcotics in lue of pay for getting the prescriptions.

In all honesty it is time to take a hard look at opioids and consider taking them off of the table rather than cannabis.

They are the most abused and used drugs in the US, that just so happen to be some of the most deadly drugs that are in fact legal here in the US.

Of course the best and easiest way to do away with opioids and opioid abuse is to begin doing away with big pharma, who more often than not buys its way out of regulation, responsibility and accountability.